The secret of Samson's strength

Samson sins again through his intercourse with "the daughter of
a strange god"; he connects himself again with women of the
Philistines, amongst whom his father's house and the tribe of Dan
were placed. But he retains his strength until the influence of
these connections becomes so great that he reveals the secret of
his strength in God. His heart, far from God, places that
confidence in a Philistine which should have existed only between
his soul and God (chap. 16).

To possess and keep a secret proves intimacy with a friend. But
the secret of God, the possession of His confidence, is the highest
of all privileges. To betray it to a stranger, be he who he may, is
to despise the precious position in which His grace has placed us;
it is to lose it. What have the enemies of God to do with the
secret of God? It was thus that Samson gave himself up to his
enemies. All attempts were powerless against him so long as he
maintained his Nazariteship. This separation once lost, although
Samson was apparently as strong, and his exterior as goodly as
before, yet Jehovah was no longer with him. "I will go out as at
other times before, and shake myself. And he wist not that Jehovah
was departed from him."

Samson's folly and his loss

We can scarcely imagine a greater folly than that of confiding
his secret to Delilah, after having so many times been seized by
the Philistines at the moment she awoke him. And thus it is with
the assembly: when it yields itself to the world, it loses all its
wisdom, even that which is common to man. Poor Samson! his
strength may be restored, but he has lost his sight for ever.

But who has ever hardened himself against the Lord, and
prospered? Job 9: 4.

Sharing the judgment of the world

The Philistines ascribe their success to their false god. God
remembers His own glory, and His poor servant humbled under the
chastisement of his sin. The Philistines assemble to enjoy their
victory and glorify their false gods. But Jehovah had His eye on
all this. In his humiliation, the thought of the Lord had more
power over the heart of Samson; his Nazariteship was regaining
strength. He makes his touching appeal to God. Who would fear a
blind and afflicted prisoner? but who amongst this world knows the
secret of Jehovah? A slave and for ever deprived of sight, his
condition affords an opportunity, which his strength had not been
able to obtain, before his unfaithfulness deprived him of it. But
he is blind and enslaved, and he must perish himself in the
judgment which he brings upon the impiety of his enemies. He had
identified himself with the world by hearkening to it, and he must
share the judgment which falls upon the world [1].

If the unfaithfulness of the assembly has given the world power
over it, the world has on the other hand assailed the rights of God
by corrupting the assembly, and therefore brings down judgment upon
itself at the moment of its greatest triumph: a judgment which, if
it puts an end to the existence, as well as to the misery of the
Nazarite, destroys at the same time in one common ruin the whole
glory of the world.

In the details of prophecy this applies to the closing history
of the Jewish people [2]. Only there the remnant is preserved, to
be established on a new base for the accomplishment of the purposes
of God.

[1] There was something of this, though in a very different form
and manner, in Jonathan. His faith was not perfect. He held the
world with one hand and David with the other, though the excuse of
natural relationship might be there.

[2] As to the professing church it is somewhat different,
because the saints are taken away to glory, and the rest, being
apostate, are judged; but the fact of judgment on the world is
identical.